Breakfast Beering: Buffalo Sweat

State: Feeling good, eating spicy dear sausage and scrambled eggs. Watching MMA Live and the UFC 129 weigh-ins.

Beer Log: right now

Got this one in cans from my St. Louis trip.

Tallgrass Buffalo Sweat
Deep brown color with quickly vaporizing deep tan head. Has a great chocolate nose to it. First thing I notice is the mouthfeel, very silky smooth. Has a moderate chocolate and a pinch of coffee. This is like Southern Star Buried Hatchet Stout Lite. And that's not a bad thing baby! High 3 stars.

Beering in St. Louis: Schlafly

So I made it out to the NSBE national convention this past March, and the locale was St. Louis. The only things I knew about St. Louis is that they were trying to extend Pujols' deal and what I read on Byron Crawford's blog . That and the highest crime rate in the country. I land in the city and I have a couple of panel discussions I'm supposed to do this time, one of them with a US Congressmen on the panel, and lo and behold I did not have time to get my hair cut. So I ask the sistahs at the hotel and they direct me to this nice place in the hood. It was about 10AM so no need to worry about some bullish going down.

Anyway, after getting hooked up, I head over to the first of several brewpubs in the Lou, first up Schlafly Taproom . I made this one my first stop as I heard about them through the Brewing Network. I get there smackdab at 11AM when they open, and belly up to the bar. The place smells of wort and grain (nice) and is spacious yet cozy. The chalk board has a ton of beer and the man working the bar knew his baseball. So I order up a flight along with some mussels and fries and have at it...

Beer Log: March 22, 2011
State: feeling good, got a new empty beer diary, ready to roll son

Hefeweizen
Good banana and orange peel nose. The taste is high banana and yeasty esters. It's kind of lemony for my taste and has moderate carbonation. This is certainly Bavarian and very well done, however the lemon knocks it from a 4 to a 3 star.

Pilsner
Good strong hops taste and kinda gritty on the tongue. Crisp, cool, high carbonation. Similar to Pilsner Urquell with all those saaz hops. Managed to forget to put down a rating.

Oktoberfest
Gold-amber-copper color without much of a scent. Not bad with the malty taste but I'm not in the right season for it. No rating

Altbier
Now I'm really looking forward to this one, as I love alts but rarely get them. Kinda fruity and plain with the taste (the thing that sucks about flights is that you lose the head and thus a larger portion of the scent to enjoy it. And unless you are boning the bartender will someone bring out a several 3 oz samples every few minutes.) I could see the style here more like an amber lager which I typically love, hello Eliot Ness. Very clear with a low butter and corn, slight acidic. Low 3 Stars.

Dry Hopped APA
Finally an American Pale Ale. Very smooth, good crisp hops. There is a great light biscuity flavor to go with the hops. I wish they ramped it up on the malt, but otherwise drinkable. 3 Stars.

Oatmeal Stout
Pitch black and delish. Very English with the smoothness, big chocolate and coffee. to make it all come together nicely. 4 Stars.

They had an American Amber on Cask of which I ordered a full glass to go to the mussels (which were killer by the way). Warm, soft, and kinda caramely like my favorite strippers. Nice hops but very mellow. High 3 Stars.

Saint Somewhere Saison

Back on the block. This beer the wife picked up in Central Florida while she was visiting some family. This puppy comes out of Tarpon Springs, Florida. Never heard of Tarpon Springs, but I'm sure their beer or their women are top notch. I guess I'll have to find out about one.

Beer Log: Right now
State: Just drank a lot of Sierra Nevada Torpedo

Fire TORPEDOS!!!
Saint Somewhere Saison
Oh wow, the cork just came off by itself. Oh yeah that carbo goes fast. Nose has that sweet/sour of a farmhouse ale. Nice straw color and the beer is nucleating all over my glass (that's what she said). Big carbo and kinda jolly rancher taste to it. Has a nice pepper and moderate hop to it, lots of herbs and whatnot. The finish is rather dry. But I will say it puts me in that psychadelic mood that matches Gnarls Barkely's St. Elsewhere. Their website says they use open fermentation, which is awesome which means we are tasting Tarpon Springs in this beer. 3 Stars for this slightly tart ale.

Jolly Pumpkin Calabaza Blanca

Picked this bad boy up while I was beering it up in St. Louis. Yes I know I am so far behind on blog posts that this may was well be a History book than a beer blog. Anyway, a small toast to HB602 passing the Texas House. Hopefully the Senate and Governor Perry will get 'er done for us.

Beer Log: Right now
State: Eating cheese lover's pizza

Jolly Pumpkin Calabaza Blanca Batch 724
Came out in a bomber and I smuggled it back from this huge beer store in St. Louis. Nose has a huge coriander and orange peel, as well as very estery yeast. Beer is a rather clear and as I take my first sip I also see that the bottle says this is barrel aged and bottle conditioned. Beer has a nice sourness to it reminiscent of pinot grigio, though I'd have to look up which type of barrel they put this in. I put this one right in the kegerator as soon as I got it home as I knew these wheat beers can be a little sensitive to heat. The carbonation is high but not as high as some bottle conditioned ones. High 3 stars.

I have not been blogging but damn have I been beering. Divine Reserves with Cigars, St. Louis brewpubbing, Camp Beer, Cigar city beer, even had some refreshing lagers out in Mexico I never heard of. I have all the notes, just need to write them up. Maybe when I get a break in the action from the job, I'll hit it hard. Holla back.

Saint Arnold Divine Reserve 11: Winning

So it snuck up on me a little bit this time, but Saint Arnold came out with their 11th installment of their Divine Reserve Series. These beers typically are from a homebrew competition winner and are brewed only one time. The beer style is always extreme and as anyone in Houston can tell you, the ish sells out in NO TIME. This time around I finally am on twitter with a hashtag setup for #DR11. I easily slip out of my office around 10:15 to hit the Randall's at Town and Country to snap up my two 6 packs. Extremely easy score. WINNING. However we were not done there. The wife and I decided to hit up Petrol Station for the beer on tap and on cask. Already dudes have been drinking this beer all day, but it is always nice for a big beer release with all the beer nerds over at Petrol Station. You gotta love Petrol, it has this patchwork quilt of clientele of beer geeks, white collar engineers, some townies, and Gothic looking roller derby women. Anyway onward to the beer. Beer Log: Two days ago State: Fired up for the DR11, already had an Real Ale Lost Gold IPA and Avery IPA as a warmup. Saint Arnold Divine Reserve 11 (on draft) This one is a dippa, or Double IPA. Reminiscent of the first DR I ever had which was an American Barley Wine. This puppy has an excellent copper color, very clear, with a light tan head. The nose has a ton of grapefruit, citrus, and pine needle thing going on. The taste is just awesome. It seems to get better the more you drink it. Lots of citrus and pine going on. It's a little cloying, but gets right back off the tongue just as fast, leaving a balanced malt-hop aftertaste. The malt is heavy caramel, not much roast or choco at all. It's very full flavored without any hint of the 9% ABV. This DIPA is graciously tipped toward the hops. So good I'm actually back on an IPA kick. I've been slamming Maibocks and Weisse beers the last month or so. Got to go all the way to the 5 out of 5 stars for this one. The drinkability is what tears it for me. So many other DIPAs fill you up or are just glorified barleywine. Nothing wrong with that, but this one drinks so well and easy, you could have a ton of it. Matter of fact, since SA said that this beer is NOT meant to be aged, I'm getting another one right now. Saint Arnold Divine Reserve 11 (Cask) So they had this son of a gun on cask at PS as well. For comparison, take everything I just posted and take it down a notch in the hoppiness and the overall strength. It seemed mellow everything out just right. On top of that the carbonation laid down quite a bit more for a much smoother more English feel to it, though the hops were still certainly American. My tastes right now are for the higher carbo of a draft beer, so I'll knock this down to a 4 star. Great overall as usual, but I'd rather have this beer via keg stand. Divine Reserve 6 Review Divine Reserve 7 Review Divine Reserve 8 Review I actually had DR2 at a Camp Beer a few months ago... SA DR2 Cloudy amber with sweet malt, caramel and plum nose. A little cold right now on the taste, but as it warms up I get a nice brown sugar and caramel flavor. This one did not have much carbonation left, but still warranted a 4 star. I actually have some DR10 in the cellar, and I need to blog it up. By the way, if you have any DR7 left, drink it now. It ages terribly. Too bad though. Moving on... Next up I have a series of blogposts about my trip to St. Louis (WINNING) and I think I still have to wrap up Indianapolis and San Francisco. Next travel will take me to Mexico and then Mobile BAMA. This summer it looks like Chicago and maybe my home town of Charlotte Carolina if I can swing it. Holla.

Family out of town weekend Extravaganza 4

Oh man here we go again. Every once in a while, a loving father finds himself in the rare position where the wife and kid(s) are gone for an entire weekend and he has the house to himself. That usually results in something happenning between the movies The Hangover and Hot Tub Time Machine. However, this time I took it easy and just enjoyed the barscene in Houston. Oh did I mention it was Saint Patrick's Day as well?

So we kicked it off at (of course) the Saucer. I checked out my plate which they put behind the toilet and enjoyed the EXCELLENT dry irish stouts of Moylans and Breckenridge. For tradition's sake, I even ordered a Guiness. Unfortunately they were out of "Black Crack", also known as Southern Star Buried Hatchet Stout. Now the Breckenridge Thunder Stout was very tasty with the more intense chocolate flavor. The Moylan's Draggoon was bit more traditional in it's calming smooth stout flavor. We even took in the Real Ale Shade Grown Coffee Porter, which really stole the show. One I was already feeling sleepy after working all day, and that intense coffee/espresso thing that Real Ale does made a lot of sense. Afterward we hit up Taps and Brixx for a ton of Guiness and Bean Bag toss with the suprisingly non douche-bags on Washington Avenue. We somehow ended up back at the Saucer for some real beering.

Next day it was Friday night and time for some Petrol Station love. Haven't hit this spot in quite some time. Looking forward to some creative beers.

Great Divide Farmhouse Colette
Cloudy straw, very yeasty funky nose. Great lemony slight sour, great wit beer thing going on. Tasty. Some grit. Lots of wheaty leven bread yeast flavor. As estery a they come. 4 stars

Dogfish Na Meste
Serious coriander and orange peel. Nose and flavor. Goes down smooth. Less filling and great taste. As I type this two days later, I want to get a keg of this stuff and hook it up to my veins. High 4 stars for the Fish.

Petrol Station seems to have been struck by the Roller Derby women as well. I love a good roller derby, complete with clotheslines and powerbombs. Looks like they are ramping up the Derby and the ladies were hitting it hard at the Station. Pretty cool ish.

Next day, as in yesterday was a bit of a clusterf*ck. So I started it out last night having some Blue Moon in a can (that's right cans) at the Niko Niko's downtown at the revamped Market Square. I remember the Market Square area a few years back when we first moved to Houston, and the "it" crowd used to hang out there all the time. Then the crowd moved to Richmond Avenue, then Main Street, then Midtown, then the Galleria, and now Washington Avenue. Seems like as soon as me and a few of the brothas find a new cool multi-cultural bar scene, the culture shortly changes their minds. Anyway...

We started out the night at the Saucer enjoying some great Weisse beers. I made the mistake of going for the Jester King/Mikeller collabo beer Drinkin' in the Sunbelt first. The American Pale Wheat was just that, a mish-mash of an American Pale Ale and a Weisse beer. I mirco-blogged this one on my twitter page (@beerbrotha), but my twitter followers were saying they plan on toning down the hops for the next one.

Afterward we hit the Dynamo game home opener and watched the new guys flail around like the Lost Children of Isreal. Damn shame but it was a good time. We stood where we always stand, with El Batallon. The very energetic young supporters group. And they were in full force with trombones, drums, new shirts, ripped orange and black fabric, and early fist fights all in the first six minutes of the damn season. Don't worry, I'll post the video later. I love watching the game with those guys. The stadium officials no longer allow us to stand in the concourse during game play and we prefer not to be held up for everyone else to leave the stadium by standing in the EB after the game has ended. The EB is so wild, but sometimes they mess around and show up late for the game, and if you go to their domain name, you will see they forgot to pay to keep the domain name. But it's South American chants, kinda ghetto, and something akin to a P-Funk crowd is just awesome.

But we figured what the hell and for the first time EVER went to sit on the other side of the stadium with the Texian Army. We only see these guys from our side of the stadium, and their stuff looks organized, well thought out, lots of homemade flags, and whatnot. But the crowd could not be the exact opposite. So HILARIOUS. If the EB is inner city Houston, the TA is Cinco Ranch Suburbia. I'll give the TA credit, they are all in it with their Soccer moms waiving flags, retired oil execs on the drums, and darling little children throwing real ass confetti. The EB uses shredded phone books for confetti, whereas the TA actually went to the Party store. Ah the dichotemy of life.

So after the game, we hit us midtown for some beering and UFC. As per my stance I was rooting for the brotha Jon Jones against Shogun Rua. As much as I like Jones, I still don't have that connection to him that I have with Rampage, Evans, Anderson Silva, Alistair Overeem and King Mo. Jones answers the age old question: what if a hippie from the 1960s were black, athletically gifted, very intelligent, and fought in the UFC? I think I like more that the MMA fanboys hate him so much which is why I like him. He's getting his due and now it's gametime. Of course he absolutely smashed Shogun and made him tap out to strikes. Fricken awesome.

The family doesn't come back for a while, and after I ran 12 miles yesterday morning, I'm debating between getting some crawfish or a pedicure. Or a Pedicure while eating crawfish. That would be the ballz. Holla. See you at Anvil.

Spring Bock Beer Tasting

It's the most wonderful time of the year! BOCK SEASON BABY! After the dog days of summer and the 58 minutes of winter we get in Houston, nothing NOTHING is better than late February in Houston, Texas. 70 degrees outside, crawfish are starting to pop up, and I can be found on the golf course on my Friday's off. But that also means that the Spring Bocks are back. Sweet, malty, low hops, crisp, easy to drink, clean, pure. I absolutely love. So let's make it happen.

Beer Log: Right now

State: A little loopy from last nights beering, especially the Saint Arnold Farmer's Brown

Abita Mardi Gras Bock

Clear amber, kinda great malt nose, a pinch raisiny taste, low hops. Has a nice water thing going that Abita is known for. Nice light body, good mouthfeel. Sure could use some crawfish right now. Light bitter aftertaste that barely lingers. High 3 stars.

Boulevard Boss Tom's Golden Bock

Golden, pinch more straw. Good caramel malt and raisin thing going on. Smell something like wheat. Good chewier beer. Has a light bread thing going, seemingly noble hops and whatnot. Nice cookie thing going on. High 3 stars, but not as high as Abita's Mardi Gras.

Saint Arnold Bock

Tinged amber color. Syrup sweet thing smell. Big caramel/cinnamon thing, with a pinch of brown sugar. Great meld of sweetness with crisp crisp aftertaste. After you drink it, it's like sipping a new one. 5 stars.

Breckenridge Pandora's Bock

Even a darker amber, copper color. Head waned quickly, so not much nose. Much stronger sweetness than SA, but a little more cloying. Has some chalkiness to it. I like the way it comes together, just that the water is not there. It's actually great, just came after the SA Bock. 4 stars.

Sierra Nevada 2011 Glissade Golden Bock

Great golden straw color. Nice lasting head. Cookie sweetness thing again. Much softer beer, better taken care of than b-ridge. Has a light hop and light sweetness to it. Extremely drinkable. A little more balanced with the hops. Has a lemony hop I'm getting now. Palate getting low. High 3 stars.

Gordon Biersch Blonde Bock

Very clear straw. Very tasty caramel malt, nice sweetness, low hops. Has a little honey thing going on as well. Great light mouthfeel as well. Has some light bread to it, but more of a oatmeal raisin bread. Funny thing is I don't care for raisins, but I love the flavor in the beer. Kinda running out of taste buds there. No rating right now.